VI
The buccaneers were rioting in Panama. Barrels of wine had been rolled to a large warehouse. The floor had been cleared of its clutter of merchandise, and now a wild dance was in progress. Numbers of women were there, women who had gone over to the pirates. They danced and flung about to the shrieking of flutes as though their feet did not sound on the grave of Panama at all. They, dear economists, were gaining back some of the lost treasure, using a weapon more slow, but no less sure, than the sword.
In a corner of the warehouse sat The Burgundian and his one-armed protector.
“See, Emil! That one there—Consider to yourself her hips now!”
“I see her, ’Toine, and it is good of you. Do not think I do not appreciate your trouble for my pleasure. But I am silly enough to have an ideal, even in copulation. This proves to me that I am still an artist, if not a gentleman.”
“But see, Emil. Notice for a moment the fullness of her bosom.”
“No, ’Toine; I see nothing that endangers my rose pearl. I will keep it by me a while yet.”
“But really, my friend, I think you lose your sense of beauty. Where is that careful eye we used to fear so on our canvases?”
“The eye is here, ’Toine. It is still here. It is your own little eye which makes nymphs of brown mares.”
“Then—Then, Emil, since you persist in your blindness, perhaps you would condescend to loan me your rose pearl. There—I thank you. I shall return it presently.”
Grippo was seated in the middle of the floor, sullenly counting the buttons on his sleeve.
“—eight, nine—There were ten. Some bastard has stolen my button. Ah, this world of thieves! It is too much. I would kill for that button. It was my favorite button. One, two, three—Why there are ten. One, two, three, four—” About him the dancers rocked and the air was reeking with the shrill cries of the flutes.
Captain Sawkins glowered at the dancers. He firmly believed that to dance was to go to hell by a short route. Beside him, Captain Zeigler sadly watched the flow of liquor. This Zeigler was called the Tavern Keeper of the Sea. It was his practice, after a raid, to keep the men at sea until they had spent their plunder buying the rum which he supplied. Once he had a mutiny, it is said, because for three months he sailed around and around one island. He could not help it. The men still had money and he still had rum. This night he was saddened by these barrels of liquor which were being drunk without any obbligato of coins ringing on the counter. It was unnatural to him and mischievous.
Henry Morgan was sitting alone in the Hall of Audience. He could barely hear the crying music of the dance. Throughout the day little bands of men had come in, bearing bits of belated treasure dug from the earth or drawn with iron hooks from the cisterns. One old woman had swallowed a diamond to save it, but the searchers dug for that, too, and found it.
Now a gray twilight was in the Hall of Audience. All through the day Henry Morgan had been sitting in his tall chair, and the day had changed him. His eyes, those peering eyes which had looked out over a living horizon, were turned inward. He had been looking at himself, looking perplexedly at Henry Morgan. In the years of his life and of his adventuring, he had believed so completely in his purpose, whatever it may have been at the moment, that he had given the matter little thought. But today he had considered himself, and, in the gray twilight, he was bewildered at the sight of Henry Morgan. Henry Morgan did not seem worthy, or even important. Those desires and ambitions toward which he had bayed across the world like a scenting hound, were shabby things now he looked inward at himself. And wonderment like the twilight was about him in the Hall of Audience.
As he sat in the half dark, the wrinkled duenna crept in and stood before him. Her voice was like the crumpling of paper.
“My lady wishes to speak with you,” she said.
Henry rose and walked heavily after her toward the cell. A candle was burning before the holy picture on the wall. The Madonna represented was a fat, Spanish peasant, holding a flabby child at which she looked with sad astonishment. The priest who painted it meant to put reverence on her face, but he had so little experience with reverence. He had been successful, however, in making it a good portrait of his dull mistress and his child. Four reales, the picture brought him.
Ysobel sat under the picture. When Henry entered she went quickly to him.
“It is said I am to be ransomed.”
“Your husband sent a messenger.”
“My husband! I am to go back to him? to his scented hands?”
“Yes.”
She pointed to a chair and forced Henry to seat himself. “You did not understand me,” she said. “You could not understand me. You must know something of the life I have traveled. I must tell you this thing, and then you will understand me, and then—”
She awaited his interest. Henry was silent.
“Don’t you wish to hear this thing?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Well, it is short. My life has been short. But I want you to understand me, and then—”
She looked sharply into his face. Henry’s mouth was pinched as though in pain. His eyes contemplated bewilderment. He made no reply to her pause.
“It was this way, you see,” she began. “I was born here in Panama, but my parents sent me to Spain when I was a small child. I lived in a convent in Cordova. I wore gray dresses and lay in watch before the Virgin on my nights given to adoration. Sometimes I went to sleep when I should have been praying. I have suffered for that laxness. When I had been there a number of years, the bravos raided my father’s plantation here in Panama and killed all of my family. I was left with no relative save one old grandfather. I was alone, and I was sad. I did not sleep on the floor before the Virgin for a time.
“I had grown handsome, that I knew, for once a Cardinal who was visiting the school looked at me, and his lips trembled, and the great veins stood out on his hands when I kissed his ring. He said, ‘Peace be with you, my daughter. Have you anything you would like to confess to me privately?’
“I heard the cry of the water sellers over the wall, and I heard the scuffle of a quarrel. Once two men fought with swords in sight of me, where I stood on a stick and looked over the wall. And one night a young man brought a girl to the shadow of the gate and lay with her there within two paces of me. I heard them whisper together, she protesting her fears, and he reassuring her. I fingered my gray gown and wondered whether this boy would plead with me if he knew me. When I spoke to one of the sisters about this night she said, ‘it is wicked to hear such things, and more wicked to think of them. You must do penance for your curious ears. What gate did you say?’
“The fishmonger would cry, ‘Come, little gray angels, and look on my basket of catch. Come out of your holy prison, little gray angels.’
“One night I climbed over the wall and went away from the city. I do not mean to tell you of my journeying, but only of the day when I came to Paris. The King was riding through the streets, and his equipage was glittering and gold. I stood high on my toes in the crowd of people and watched the courtiers go riding by. Then, suddenly, a dark face was thrust before me, and a strong hand took my arm. I was led to a doorway apart from the people.
“See, Captain; he whipped me with a thong of hard leather he had only for that purpose. His face had something of a beast’s snarl hiding very near the surface. But he was free—a bold, free, thief. He killed before he stole—always he killed. And we lived in entryways, and on the floors of churches, and under the land arch of a bridge, and we were free—free from thoughts and free from fears and worries. But once he went away from me, and I found him hanging by the neck on a gallows—oh, a great gallows festooned with men hanging by their necks.
“Can you understand that, Captain? Do you see that as I saw it? And does it mean anything at all to you?” Her eyes were on fire.
“I walked back to Cordova, and my feet were torn. I did penance until my body was torn, but I could not drive out all the devil. I was exorcised, but the devil was deep in me. Can you understand that, Captain?” She looked into Henry’s face and saw that he had not been listening. She stood beside him and moved her fingers in his graying hair.
“You are changed,” she said. “Some light is gone out of you. What fear has fallen on you?”
He stirred from his reverie.
“I do not know.”
“I was told that you killed your friend. Is it that which burdens you?”
“I killed him.”
“And do you mourn for him?”
“Perhaps. I do not know. I think I mourn for some other thing which is dead. He might have been a vital half of me, which, dying, leaves me half a man. Today I have been like a bound slave on a white slab of marble with the gathered vivisectors about me. I was supposed to be a healthy slave, but the scalpels found me sick with a disease called mediocrity.”
“I am sorry,” she said.
“You are sorry? Why are you sorry?”
“I think I am sorry because of your lost light, because the brave, brutal child in you is dead—the boastful child who mocked and thought his mockery shook the throne of God; the confident child who graciously permitted the world to accompany him through space. This child is dead, and I am sorry. I would go with you, now, if I thought it possible to warm the child to life again.”
Henry said, “It is strange. Two days ago I planned to tear a continent out of the set order and crown it with a capital of gold for you. In my mind, I built up an empire for you, and planned the diadem you should wear. And now I dimly remember the person who thought these things. He is an enigmatic stranger on a staggering globe.
“And you—I feel only a slight uneasiness with you. I am not afraid of you any more. I do not want you any more. I am filled with a nostalgia for my own black mountains and for the speech of my own people. I am drawn to sit in a deep veranda and to hear the talk of an old man I used to know. I find I am tired of all this bloodshed and struggle for things that will not lie still, for articles that will not retain their value in my hands. It is horrible,” he cried. “I do not want anything any more. I have no lusts, and my desires are dry and rattling. I have only a vague wish for peace and the time to ponder imponderable matters.”
“You will take no more cups of gold,” she said. “You will turn no more vain dreams into unsatisfactory conquests. I am sorry for you, Captain Morgan. And you were not right about the slave. Ill he was, indeed, but not with the illness you have mentioned. But I suppose your sins are great. All men who break the bars of mediocrity commit frightful sins. I shall pray for you to the Holy Virgin, and She will intercede for you at the throne of Heaven. But what am I to do?”
“You will go back to your husband, I suppose.”
“Yes, I will go back. You have made me old, Señor. You have pricked the dream on which my heavy spirit floated. And I wonder whether, in the years to come, you will blame me for the death of your friend.”
Henry flushed quickly.
“I am trying to do something of that sort now,” he said. “It does not seem worth the while to lie any more, and that is only one more proof of dead youth. But now, goodbye, Ysobel. I wish I loved you now as I thought I did yesterday. Go back to your husband’s scented hands.”
She smiled and raised her eyes to the holy picture on the wall. “Peace go with you, dear fool,” she murmured. “Ah, I too have lost my youth. I am old—old—for I cannot console myself with the thought of what you have missed.”